The Internet and Alice's Restaurant
Is the Internet The Twilight Zone? Or is it Alice's Restaurant?
hmmm...
I believe it's the latter.
Depends on whether the universe is expanding or contracting.
Contraction: The Twilight Zone announces by its very title that it is something frightening, possibly even negative.
And of course it is. Night Gallery (also by Rod Serling) was even more horrific. I remember the one with a black and
white painting of a drawn and hunched male figure lumbering toward the locked main entrance to a home. After every
commercial, the tortured resident of the home would pass by the painting on his way up the staircase and see that
this grim, gray figure was painted closer to the front door of his home. Toward the end of that chalkboard-scratching
episode of Night Gallery, the fellow was practically crawling up the stairs in dread, unable to avoid spying the large
picture frame on the wall. The music spiked, and the painting informed him that this ghostly figure was now At The
Front Door with his hand on the knob.
Of course, the poor guy inside fell down the stairs in an instant fit of insanity...and died.
THE END.
Long Live Hollywood. (The glory days are Long Over.)
Expansion: I don't normally feel the Internet makes it necessary to wear a bite plate so I don't grind my teeth off; or
as being as negative and psychologically debilitating as The Twilight Zone -- outside of the possibility that the
invisible electromagnetic signals coming off of the computer have an element of science fiction...some creeping crud
aspect that eventually will indeed leave me unconsciousness on the stairwell one late day after staring into the abyss
all morning.
Nietzsche said, "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you."
I do not know for sure what I am staring into when sitting at the computer during the day. An abyss? Who is the abyss
-- me or the computer? I'm this instant staring into some very unclear territory, so we'll leave that for another, more
enlightened, day.
Alrightee, then, onto Alice's Restaurant. Alice's Restaurant is actually an eating establishment in Southern California.
It is also a very famous 1967 album and title song by Arlo Guthrie. It's a YouTube video, the original version of which
is merely a still of the singer sitting at a cafe table (thus, you are listening to a song and staring at a picture as the
video line moves from the beginning to the end). It's also a full-length movie. It's everything you ever wanted. And you
can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant.
The crux here is that sandwiched between the simple chorus that both begins and ends this song, the 18-minute trek
into an actual incident opens up an entire world of ideas and experiences and thoughts. This sounds a bit like the
Internet. The opening of the online song is the sound of booting up, and the ending is the sound of shutting down the
computer or closing the app on the phone. In between these two black and white pillars stands everything there is to
know, everything that ever happened or that didn't happen. Everything about anyone who ever lived and died. You
can go as deeply down the well as you like, into the Deep Web and deeper. It is infinite, as the human mind is infinite
(some may argue against that).
It's so real that it's perfectly unreal.
It addresses, by its very existence, the question of whether the universe is infinitely expanding or if it shall contract at
some point. Of course, it is internally biased; so questions inevitably arise in the reader's mind...which brings the
reader and his or her own existence into the equation. This adds a completely new dimension and (at least) width to
the span of the Internet Universe every time that person gets onto the web, because insofar as "change is the only
constant," both people and the Internet are continuously changing.
When I die, another one shall take my place in adding this width. I dare not call forays onto the Internet as depth,
because it is merely past knowledge that I am extracting. I don't call that depth. So either the human race -- or
whatever exactly it is by which the Internet exists and continues to exist -- will die out and the web dies as well; or it
will continue to expand. Or, there will come a time when it loses its relevance, while the human race is still extant.
Like, say, McDonalds. It Can Happen.
Alice's Restaurant -- the building, the song, the unmoving video, and the movie -- may or may not last forever:
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The building will likely be pushed into perpetuity by the traditionalists of the Guthrie family's music, because
as we all know, music never dies; the building will eventually need to be demolished or completely rehabbed,
but the same restaurant could go back, if the traditions and memories that create the human mind deem the
"food" there necessary for its survival as a race of creators.
The song will live on as long as the Internet does, as that's the global mode of communication now, even in
music. Over time, Guthrie fans have died or continue to die out since it's an entirely different generation. One
would need to be about 47 years old right now to even have been alive when the song and its awards came
onto the scene in America. Thus, what perpetuates it: The Internet, of course, along with the human memory
and its preoccupation with honoring the past and its traditions.
The unmoving video has likely been, and will yet likely be, recreated into another form on another type of
platform, a moving target of technology, to keep it alive -- again, the work of the traditionalists and, more
fundamentally, the human memory.
The movie, though long in the can, will last until it is dust. Then it will be remastered through human
technological innovation and live on in its new format. Certainly no one is making much royalty income off of it
in the 21st century, though; and because money runs the globe at this point, that may herald its demise.
Money, in fact, is what keeps the Internet -- and the entire mass of humanity and its societies -- going along. It's
apparently called "progress."
That is very empty from this viewpoint. Alice's Restaurant, at base in any of its forms, is not empty, however:
1. Music is imperative in the human culture, even nonhuman cultures. The Internet has music pretty much covered for
the long haul.
2. Living beings must eat food to remain alive, and the restaurant provides this. Thought keeps humans going, and
the Internet provides all the food for thought (as well as Yelp and other sites' thought for food) that one could ever
need in order to continue that existence.
3. Words, thoughts, feelings drive the engine of humanity; thus, the feelings and the thoughts behind the words will
keep the song's lyrics and the movie's visions alive.
As long as there is a human mind, there will be an Alice's Restaurant, and there will be the Internet.
I guess...